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Sharnoa CNC Knee Mill upgrade to Centroid M400 CNC control
Replacement CNC control for Sharnoa equipped CNC machine tools. Replacement CNC Parts and Service for Sharnoa
Located in Chino, California. RPM RC Products specializes in making high performance parts for Radio Controlled Vehicle Industry. Established in 1974 by Richard Royall as a plastic mold making and injection molding facility of precision molded parts. In the mid 80's RPM began designing parts for the R/C industry using the same precision techniques. RPM likes to keep control of the design and quality of its R/C parts by producing every component of the injection mold process in-house. An accurate, easy to use, reliable, precision CNC machine for carbon electrode machining is an integral part of RPM's in-house mold producing shop.
Atticus Overbay, RPM's CNC programmer and machinist, says that RPM purchased this Sharnoa new in 1987. This machine is very stout and produces excellent finishes while holding tight tolerances. Over the years as RPM grew into 3D machining for mold making the original control could not keep up. After putting up with the slow (point to point) Sharnoa control for a while, it started to have electrical problems so Atticus gave Doug Laursen of Machines in Motion a call to have a New Centroid M400 CNC control installed. Doug used to work for Sharnoa many years ago, after Sharnoa went out of business, Doug became a Centroid dealer/installer and has sold over 400 Centroid control systems. Machines in Motion is located in Chino Hills, California.
Atticus uses Mastercam version 6 to program the 3D g-code to create the carbon electrodes. He says the Centroid handles the large programs with no problems and he like the ability to stop check his work and restart at any point. He solid models his parts to get all the angles and drafts just right before committing to machining carbon or steel.
RPM makes the electrodes, the molds and does the injection all under one roof.
The original servo motors were reused making the upgrade simple as there isn't any mechanical work to fit new motors. And there is the cost saving as well, reusing existing servos in this case saved over $3000 in the cost of the upgrade.
These machines have the X and Y axes encoder mounted directly to the end of the ballscrew. While not typical, this setup does produce good results as long as the servo motor to ballscrew mechanical system is in good shape with low lash (play).
Doug upgraded the old encoders with new modern high resolution units during the installation of the Centroid M400 CNC system.
Now that RPM has the capability to produce new parts and new products quickly and affordably Richard says "its really taking off and 95% of our CNC work is stuff we do for ourselves"
Here is an example of a R/C car body, RPM is building a set of side bumpers, notice the tan side bumper in the middle upper part of the image, its a prototype to check fit before production run.
"Its been a good machine, the same program we run now that takes about an hour, would have taken me about 3 hours on the old CNC" ‐Atticus, RPM RC Products
